At the second session of the SteelOrbis 2022 Fall Conference & 87th IREPAS Meeting held in Monaco on October 9-11, Hüseyin Ocakçı, Middle East general manager of CIEC Group, started his presentation by talking about the real estate industry, which he described as “one of the biggest drags on the Chinese economy”. He said that Chinese real estate sales in 2022 decreased by 40 percent year on year, while investment in the real estate industry during the year dropped by about 7.5 percent.
According to the CIEC official, Chinese average daily crude steel production peaked this year in June at about 2.4 million mt and later fell to 2.2 million mt per day, down 7.9 percent. In September, average daily crude steel production was in the range of 2.3-2.4 million mt. On the other hand, for the first eight months of the current year, average monthly steel production in the country amounted to 86.3 million mt. Mr. Ocakçı explained that since the start of the war in Ukraine in February, as supply was disrupted buyers turned to China to source material and Chinese crude steel production increased, even rising above the monthly average during March, April and May. He went on to say that, during the first seven months of 2022, China’s crude steel production decreased by 6.5 percent to 609 million mt, while the capacity utilization rate for the first nine months stood at 86 percent. In August this year, China exported 6.15 million mt of steel, including 3.8 million mt of flat steel and 650,000 mt of long steel, while the country imported 895,000 mt of steel during the month, including 70,000 mt of billet and 427,000 mt of slab.
Commenting on the effects of the war on Turkey and the role of China, the CIEC official said that during the January-August period this year Turkey’s steel imports declined by 2.2 percent to 11.1 million mt, while its imports from Ukraine fell by 1.24 million mt and its imports from Russia were down by 345,000 mt. The shortfall in Turkey’s steel imports from Russia and Ukraine was compensated for by imports from China (727,000 mt), Brazil (237,000 mt), India (210,000 mt) and South Korea (128,000 mt).
Answering a question from the audience, Ocakçı said that, with insufficient demand in the Chinese domestic market, imports from Russia have been affecting prices negatively, not allowing prices to pick up. He also said that, apart from ex-Russia imports, the Chinese market is also negatively affected by Southeast Asian material as Southeast Asian producers are more aggressive in their offers to China.